Well, it took some time but finally Hasbro produced the Luke Skywalker figure they should have put out last year when they released the 2011 Jedi Knight Luke. However, this version of Luke Skywalker (VC87) is based mostly on one of the deleted scenes included as an extra for the Blu-Ray release of the original trilogy.

Fundamentally, this Luke uses the same limbs from that other version, although the head, torso and rubber waist pieces are newly sculpted.

The torso and the waist piece are sculpted to represent the short tunic and sash he wore in his audience with Jabba, and a short fabric skirt was added to represent the lower edge of the tunic.

The new head looks much more like Mark Hamill than the previous one. Some complaints have been voiced about how the hair seems to be parted the wrong way but, the way I see it, Luke was simply having hair issues that day, with all that running from the Rancor, fighting above the Pit of Carkoon and slogging it back to his ship during a raging sandstorm.

The overall body proportions look fine and since the basic structure remains the same as on the other Luke version, the new one has the same articulation model consisting of:

• Ball jointed neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Pegged hinge wrists.

• Swivel waist.

• Pegged hinge hips.

• Pegged hinge knees.

• Pegged hinge ankles.

The extra wrist articulation is very useful for lightsaber grabbing poses, although the joints do tend to look rather bulky. All of the joints work like they should, although on my figure the right ankle was particularly stubborn at first.

The paint applications on this Luke are fairly minimal. The vest piece was painted in a very dark gray hue, and the boots were painted glossy black, with a little dab of gray to simulate dust or sand residue. The hair is painted in a medium brown color, while the eyes have the neatly applied three-color paint application Hasbro regularly uses.

Since this figure is was made to represent the character while he was constructing his lightsaber, the accessories include a deactivated lightsaber hilt sculpted with an open panel and a small tool (looks like tweezers to me), in addition to a standard green bladed lightsaber, an utility belt and a brown fabric robe. Even though I really like the Lightsaber Construction Luke figure and all the other accessories are really great, the robe sucks.

Let’s talk about fashion for a moment here, Shall we? A cloak is a garment consisting on a piece of cloth that covers the body and closes at the neck of the wearer using a clasp or some such holding device; it may or may not include a hood (in which case it is called a cape), but one thing it generally lacks are sleeves.

While Luke was on Tatooine, prior to his audience at Jabba’s and up to his rendez-vous with the Rancor, he was wearing a cloak, not a robe. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to have the figure ship with the same hooded robe Hasbro has been using for Jedi for a couple of years now.

Now, even cutting Hasbro some slack in the outfit selection issue, the real problem is that the garment is so absurdly large, it seems it was developed for an entirely different scale of action figures.

Luke is not a buff character, so the action figure gets kind of lost inside the robe and it is extremely frustrating to try and find a natural looking pose for the surplus fabric bunching up behind him.

Don’t get me wrong, I like this figure a lot and I’d still recommend it to anyone looking for the best representation of the character as he appeared in the first third of Return of the Jedi but. How hard would it have been for Hasbro to just copy the cloak pattern from the vintage Kenner version?

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